The Story Garden 5.0
Flash Fiction
Twelfth Night
"Mésdames et Monsieurs!"
Such a hideous satyr.
"Je vous presentez La Nuit Festives."
It's a disaster; they must have started drinking that morning, or carried it over from the week's festivities. The dwarf has been appointed their Lord of Misrule. The rest of the year, he probably shovels out stables.
"Mèrde!" Yvette squawks with outrage. "Maudit toto-en-fesse!"
His contorted face presses into her buttocks, moaning with mock-arrousal as he dry-humps her. Belly laughs erupt from the audience. A man's voice shouts out some English obscenities about the smell on her legs. The rest of us stare at each other in confusion and panic.
Yvette bashes the dwarf's head with the prop thyrsis, until a piece of gilded plaster snaps and gouges his forehead. Blood everywhere. Blood on the white tunic. More swearing from her and whistles from the audience.
This insect hops onto the plaster plinth. He squats. Cloth grapes scatter as he snatches at the folds of cloth covering her breasts. The Englishmen bay their approval. Yvette is jumping back as if he's splashing her with acid. He grabs a hank of hair instead, nearly ripping her head off as the plinth topples and he falls. Mostly, it is her hairpiece he has grabbed and she shakes it loose, but with much pain. By a miracle, she manages to stay upright. We watch, frozen in horror, as he still clutches some of Yvette's long strands of hair and she writhes in pain. She launches a barrage of kicks at his midriff and shrieks of things only an ugly deformed stable-hand might consider, which makes the men laugh louder. The moment the dwarf releases her hair, Yvette runs.
We all scatter.
Louise, the manager who hired us, hides behind the draperies and bites her lip, calculating how to salvage the evening. True enough that she chose this Greek Masque to excite them. The costumes reveal our bare legs, shoulders and the curves of our necks, but she has misjudged. No one wants to be ravished. Not at her pay!
They wheedle, "Come back! Show us your quim."
And catcall.
"Get on your feet, you sweaty little bastard! What have you done to the pretty girls?"
In the dim gaslight, I run headlong into Emmanuel.
"Alors! Give me your dress," he hisses.
"Are you mad?" I struggle past, but he grabs my shoulders and I see he has a plan to distract the mob. A bizarre turban, rigged from stray hairpieces and greenery, teeters on his head and is meant to look like our coiffures. Emmanuel's cheeks are rouged circles and lines of mascara radiate from his eyes like the lashes of a crazed mechanical poupée. I hand the tunic over and he slings it over his head and stuffs two rags in the bosom. No woman has such shoulders! He is also too busy to fully appreciate my situation. As I race to the makeshift dressing room, I hear his falsetto tenor coo at the dwarf. "Come to me, mon p'tit cherie!"
And fresh roars as the Englishmen smell blood.
--Twelfth Night
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